African Raptors

When you include the early Croom Helm and Pica Press editions, the Helm Identification Series now covers over fifty titles, but this is the first to focus on Africa. It covers all 107 raptor species that occur in Africa either as breeding species or migrants. Bill Clark is well known for his expertise on American raptors and he has travelled widely away from his home in the USA. Before moving back to the UK, Rob Davies was based in South Africa and took a special interest in raptors and set up the African Raptor Databank. He is responsible for the 52 colour plates.

The taxonomy followed is basically that of IOC but with the splitting away of Ethiopian Goshawk Accipiter unduliventer, which IOC and Clements treat as a race of African Goshawk Accipiter tachiro but HBW/Birdlife puts into Red-chested Goshawk Accipiter toussenelli.

An introductory section explains how the book is set out and could perhaps have been used to explain how African raptors live. For example, it would have been useful to have at least some information on raptor ecology and perhaps an overview of the amazing migrations that some species undertake, plus the challenges that they face both in Europe and Africa. Although this book gives plenty of information on identification it does not discuss conservation at any point which is a missed opportunity.

Rob Davies’s plates are all at the front end of the book, and are very pleasing. Each faces a page with captions and most species are shown against a suitable habitat background. Personally, I prefer such illustrations to be free of backgrounds which I find tend to take away from my ability to detect the subtleties of plumage colouration. However, they are impressive illustrations and are clearly labelled.

These are followed by the species accounts which cover identification, measurements, taxonomy, geographical variation, similar species, status and distribution, habitat, behaviour and moult. There is also a more detailed explanation of plumage according to sex and age, and there are references to unusual plumage variations and hybrids. There is also an explanation of the origins behind the species’ English and scientific names. Each species text is accompanied by a decent-sized colour map indicating range and seasonality and these are really clear. A list of around 300 references is given and these focus mostly on identification and moult.

The main texts are accompanied by a useful set of 322 colour photographs, and it is good to see these interspersed within the text rather than bunched together in one section. As I personally work on the Peregrine Falcon Falco peregrinus I immediately turned to that species and unfortunately the first photograph I saw was incorrect – a juvenile labelled as an adult. I would also like to have seen a wider selection of images showing the different races of this and other species both perched. No doubt in some cases such images are not available but a quick check of the African Bird Club’s freely-available AFBID photo database shows that many suitable images exist but were not included.

Sadly it seems that a number of labelling errors exist on other photographs and these will hopefully be corrected in later additions of the book. Despite these errors, it is great to see Africa’s raptors put in the spotlight.